The soon-to-be-released Core i5-10400 manages to pretty much keep up with the Core i7-9700F in many of the gaming benchmarks presented, and even sneaks in front of it in the occasional scenario.

To pick a few results, 3DMark Fire Strike witnessed the i5-10400 hitting 18,960 compared to the Core i7-9700F which managed 19,471. TimeSpy saw a reversal of that situation with 8,543 matched up against 8,347 for the Core i7.

GTA V produced a result of 175 frames per second (fps) for the Core i5, and almost 178 fps for the i7, a difference which won’t be realistically at all discernible. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey saw the Core i5 come out on top although the difference was again very marginal with 67 playing 65 fps.

In short, the Core i5-10400 would seem to pretty much be a match for the Core i7-9700F, even though it has two fewer cores (six rather than eight), and a slower Turbo clock at 4.3GHz compared to 4.7GHz.

Price is right?

Of course, we have to also bear in mind the pricing side of the equation, with the incoming Core i5-10400 expected to retail at $182 (around £145, AU$285) – that’s the price to manufacturers, so consumers will doubtless have to pay a little more. That contrasts sharply with the current asking price of the 9700F at around $330 (around £265, AU$515) at US retailers online (and that’s the ‘F’ non-GPU version – the 9700 with integrated graphics costs a bit more).

However, we should remember that this is just a leak, so we shouldn’t get too carried away with the info – and also away from games in multithreaded workloads, the last-gen Core i7 processor still has a predictably sizeable advantage (with those two extra cores earning their keep).

Still, this bodes well for the incoming Core i5 as an affordable mid-range Comet Lake CPU offering impressive levels of bang for buck in terms of gaming performance. The Core i5-10400 is expected to launch later in May, alongside other Comet Lake offerings.